Traditional Welsh Christmas Recipes: Taffy - a Christmas Eve custom
This was a popular Christmas treat in Wales at the turn of the last century.
Got a sweet tooth? Why not re-live an old Welsh custom this Christmas? Taffy-making....
This is how families whiled away the dark hours of Christmas Eve's night, leading up to the Plygain service. Toffee was boiled in pans on open fires and - this is a nice twist - dollops were dropped into icy cold water.
The taffy curled into all sorts of shapes - like letters. This was a way of divining the initials of the younger, unmarried family members' future loves.
Ingredients:
1 lb of powdered loaf sugar
1 teacupful of water
¼ lb of butter
6 drops of essence of lemon
Put the water and sugar into a brass pan, and beat the butter to a cream. When the sugar is dissolved, add the butter and keep stirring the mixture over the fire until it sets, when a little is poured on to a buttered dish; and just before the toffee is done, add the essence of lemon.
Butter a dish or tin, pour on it the mixture, and when cool, it will easily separate from the dish.
Butter-Scotch, an excellent thing for coughs, is made with brown, instead of white sugar, omitting the water, and flavoured with ½oz. of powdered ginger. It is made in the same manner as toffee.
Time: 18 to 35 minutes.
Sufficient to make 1lb of toffee.
Credit to BBCSee More
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